MUSICOLOGY

Egon Wellesz

Austrian-born composer, conductor, scholar and teacher (1885-1974). He studied at the Vienna University (1895-1908) with G. Adler and at the New Vienna Conservatory (1911-1915). He took lessons from Schönberg (1905-1906) and attended Mahler’s rehearsals at Vienna Opera. He taught at Vienna University (1913-1938, professor of History of Music from 1929) and in 1938 went to England, joining the Faculty of Music at the Oxford University as a lecturer. He was reader in Byzantine music (1948-1956) and authority on Byzantine music and Gregorian chant. He wrote several books on those and other subjects and was the first biographer of Schönberg (1921). Some of his works are in the idiom of Schönberg and of medieval music, but in later years he reverted to diatonicism.